


Readers

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2016 [4]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 13:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7053367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Any Stargate, Any +/Any, A universe where the Stargate was never lost."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Readers

Jack O’Neill was the First Prime of Camulus because an O’Neill had always been the First Prime of Camulus. Samantha Carter was the First Female Prime of the Morrigan, and everyone wondered, what with the alliance between Camulus and The Morrigan, if O’Neill and Carter would be wed and bred, but no one dared ask. The Morrigan’s First Male Prime was John Sheppard, a man whose charm was a veneer over a steel core. He was efficient, ruthless, and got the job done without question. It was Rodney McKay, The Morrigan’s Chief Scientist, who first brought word of The Prisoner. He was a human, not a noble Jaffa, and he had done the unthinkable: he had learned to read.  
  
“His parents were readers,” McKay said quietly, while he and Carson Beckett, the Chief Geneticist, were working in the lab together.  
  
“His parents? How did he survive?” Beckett asked in a low voice.  
  
“He speaks many languages, or so Apophis’s Serpent Guards say,” McKay said. He kept his gaze averted from Beckett, his voice low, so anyone of the Jaffa soldiers watching would think he was just working. “He could hide among various human populations, blend in, move from nation to nation, so he was hard to catch. And as he went, he spread stories. Rumors. Lies, of course.”  
  
“Of course,” Beckett said, equally quiet.  
  
“He says that many years ago, humans defeated the Goa’uld, defeated Ra himself, drove him away from this planet. Only they failed to dispose of the Chappa’ai, so Ra returned, and he brought the other System Lords with him. He says that if the humans choose, they can rise up, defeat Ra and his followers. There are more humans, and if the Jaffa join them -”  
  
“Don’t you speak it,” Beckett hissed, and then louder, “Pass the pipette, please.”  
  
McKay slid it across the table, and for the next several hours they said nothing more to each other.  
  
That night, McKay lay in bed with Sheppard, and he whispered what he had learned.  
  
Sheppard supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised to see O’Neill and Carter down in the cell, inspecting the prisoner. He was hardly a threatening figure - young, slight, with blue eyes and those glasses that marked human imperfection: poor eyesight. But when he spoke, the tale he told was...remarkable. Carter offered him a datapad through the bars of the cell, and he showed her writing. Pictures. The tale of the mortals driving Ra away. Sheppard had seen precisely those drawings on the walls of the Great Pyramid where Ra landed his Hatak on a regular basis. He’d always assumed they were images of Ra conquering the people, even if he’d never looked too closely at them, but now that he did, he could see that the prisoner’s story made more sense than the explanation he’d heard from childhood.  
  
“Daniel Jackson,” O’Neill said, testing out the name, “what would you have us do with this knowledge?”  
  
“I would have you join us and fight,” Jackson said quietly.  
  
“But without the goa’uld we cannot live.” O’Neill lifted a hand to his primta pouch absently. Carter did the same.  
  
“There is a way.” Jackson’s eyes were alight with fervor. “There is a drug, called Tretonin. It allows a Jaffa to be free of his symbiote.”  
  
“How do you know this?” McKay demanded.  
  
Sheppard put a hand on his shoulder, restraining him, reminding him to keep his voice low. “Why would you ask this of us?”  
  
“Because I come from another world,” Jackson said. “Not just another world, but another universe. And in that universe, I fought alongside Colonel Jack O’Neill against the Ra on Abydos, and we defeated him. I fought alongside Major Samantha Carter, and we took on Apophis, and Anubis, and so many other System Lords. We defeated the Goa’uld once, and we can do it again. And in that universe we freed the Jaffa.”  
  
“Why should we trust you?” O’Neill demanded.  
  
“I know about Charlie,” Jackson said quietly.

O’Neill stiffened. Carter cast him a look, and he glared at her, as if she had betrayed him.  
  
Few knew the tale of O’Neill’s son, how he had accidentally killed himself while attempting to use one of O’Neill’s weapons. Had young Charlie died in combat with another young Jaffa, Camulus probably would have let O’Neill try for another son to carry on the O’Neill line of First Primes, but Camulus had declared O’Neill’s bloodline weak and had O’Neill’s wife Sara executed in the throne room. O’Neill had been forbidden from marrying or fathering ever again.  
  
And everyone knew Carter was waiting for permission from The Morrigan to marry, because then she could choose O’Neill for herself.  
  
It was McKay who said, “So, what’s the first step?”  
  
Jackson smiled and said, “Calling in reinforcements.” And he shoved back his sleeve, revealed a device that looked like a wristwatch, and said, “This is Daniel Jackson from the other side of the McKay-Miller bridge.”  
  
“Roger that, Jackson. Go for Control.”  
  
Sheppard blinked. That voice belonged to Evan Lorne, his second-in-command.  
  
Jackson smiled at Sheppard and said, “Send AR-1 and SG-1 and the marines, please.”


End file.
